at home

I have this weekend off, and then no more days till vacation at the end of the month. That’s my chief’s idea. Technically, it fulfills the rule of “average one day off a week over the course of a month.” But I don’t fancy this interpretation at all. When I’m chief (what a funny idea) I will try to arrange things more to the biblical pattern of one day every week; even if it isn’t Sunday, it’s still more biblical and more physiological that way.

But I got to cook and clean, and go to morning church service, perhaps for the only time this month. We sang Psalm 137 and 126 together, the first being a psalm of mourning for exile from Jerusalem, and the second a psalm of rejoicing for the return. I do love how singing psalms on a regular basis makes one roll unashamedly through verses like, “Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, who said, Raze it, raze it even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed: happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” Which I think must be an appropriate thing to say with regard to the atrocities that are occurring in the Sudan, and the persecution of Christians in Indonesia, and the babies being murdered in China. May God bring judgment on the perpetrators of these evils, and that very soon. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. It’s not wrong to ask God to take his vengeance, only to try to take it ourselves.

And from Psalm 126: “The Lord has done great things for us, whereof we are glad.”

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2 Responses to “at home”

This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this post; I just wasn’t sure whether your software was set up to alert you to comments on old posts.

I was reading through a bunch of your archives for the past month or two in one go, and you mentioned that you were on a mission to get your roommate to like vegetables. Any good tips on vegetable recipes that don’t take a lot of effort? I could definitely do with a change from frozen veg heated up…

One good way is to just fry them with onions and any other spices you like: zucchini works particularly well this way. (Just adding onions gives more spice to anything.) You can put in garlic salt, or soy sauce, or basil and oregano. The basic Egyptian format for vegetables is to fry onions, then add tomato sauce, dilute with a little water, add salt and pepper to taste, and then simmer the vegetables for 5-10 minutes until cooked. If you have time to plan ahead, potatoes cut in very thin strips, rubbed with olive oil and salt, and put in the oven for ~45 minutes make healthy french fries. Or, putting some grated cheese on top of your heated up frozen veg. :)